The scholarship program
Tutoring that doesn’t depend on the family budget
Funded places for families who want a tutor and can’t make the numbers work. Same tutors as every paying family, and the family pays nothing.
How the program works
One giving pool, fully covered places
Each scholarship covers a set number of sessions a term, typically 10. A place is a finite grant of tutoring time, not open-ended support, and each award states exactly what it covers.
Every donated teaching hour joins the one pool, alongside the platform’s own share, and places are offered as the pool covers them. Each place is covered in full before it’s offered, so no family is left half-supported. If we can’t offer you one straight away, your application stays in and we come back to you.
For families who can't make the numbers work
If tutoring keeps getting crossed off the list when the bills are added up, this is for you. Places go first to:
- Families holding a Health Care Card or Pensioner Concession Card
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
- Refugee and newly arrived families
- Families in regional and remote Australia
- Any family where $30 an hour just isn’t there right now
Not sure you fit? Apply anyway and tell us your situation in a sentence.
A funded place, not a lesser one
A scholarship place is the same tutoring a paying family books, funded for you. Every place includes:
- The same verified, WWCC-checked tutors any paying family works with
- A set number of sessions with your matched tutor, covered in full by the fund — you pay nothing
- Free access to the learning resource library — the platform’s own share of every place, the same materials tutors run sessions from
- Lessons and progress tracked in one place on the learning platform
- No fees or lock-in, and a free re-match if the fit isn’t right
When your funded sessions are used up, you’re welcome to apply again.
same tutors, same library. the hours are given, not billed
Why this matters
The gap this narrows
Access to tutoring in Australia tracks family income, and the gap it leaves gets wider as students get older. That's the problem every funded place chips away at.
10 mths → 2.5 yrs
The learning gap between students from lower- and higher-education families grows from about ten months in Year 3 to about two and a half years by Year 9.
~2.5 years
High achievers in disadvantaged schools sit roughly two and a half years behind high achievers in advantaged schools by Year 9, despite performing similarly back in Year 3.
7 year levels
A typical Year 9 class spans up to seven year-level equivalents. One-size classroom teaching can’t close that on its own.
Income decides
Private tutoring “can entrench unfairness by widening the achievement gap between high and low-income families, as socioeconomic status often determines whether parents or guardians can access tutoring.”
Source: University of Sydney (Zunica & Reid O’Connor), The Australian Educational Researcher, 2025
1 in 7
At least one in seven Australian students now uses tutoring, with as many as 80,000 private tutors working in 2024. Mainstream, but mainly for the families who can pay.
Source: University of Sydney, 2025
Where the places come from
Donated teaching hours from tutors, plus the platform’s own share, fund the places. Tutors give part of their teaching week — sessions taught at no charge to the family — and for every hour they give, the platform puts in its share in kind: free access to every learning resource for scholarship students.
Tutors give the hours. The platform gives the materials. Families pay nothing. A place is only offered once the pool covers the whole of it, so nobody ends up with half a scholarship.
What a place is for
A scholar gets the sessions their award covers, and a parent can open the platform any evening and see how it’s going.
When a place ends, the family knows well before the last session, and knows how to apply again.
And years from now, some of our first scholars come back as tutors, donating their own time.
come back as tutorsApplications
Apply in a couple of minutes
No essays, and nothing to upload. The category you pick does the screening, so a few honest details are all the form asks for.
Here’s how it runs. You send the form, we read it, and we check the category you picked fits the program’s criteria. That’s the same list further up this page.
When the fund covers a place, we ask to sight evidence for your category before it starts. Showing a concession card on a video call is enough. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, your word is enough — we accept self-identification and never ask for documentation. Nothing gets uploaded through the website, and we never keep copies.
If a place isn’t there straight away, your application stays in the queue and we keep you posted.